Dec. 2, 1875] 



NATURE 



97 



part of the island above the surface of the water is mostly 

 formed. 



"Towards evening we lay to at the Nikandrow Islands in the 

 neighbourhood of a fishing- station still inhabited. Jenisei is 

 renowned for its richness in large eatable fish-species. ... I 

 hope some months after our return home to be able to exhibit 

 to those among us who are interested in fishing, specimens of 

 most of the varieties of fish occurring here. During our sailing 

 up the river between Dudinkaandjeniseisk, I caused specimens 

 of all the species of fish which we could procure from the river 

 to be carefully deposited in a cask filled with spirit. This col- 

 lection will be sect to Stockholm vid St. Petersburg, by a 

 merchant settled in Jeniseisk. 



"Like most of the settlers on the lower course of the Jenisei, 

 the inhabitants at Nikandvow fishing-station kept a number of 

 dogs which are believed to be of the same race as the dogs used 

 on Greenland, for draught. The dogs are employed in summer 

 to tow boats up the river, and in winter for all sorts of carriages. 

 Yet the dog, for reasons stated in the introduction to Midden- 

 dorff's 'Sibirische Reise,' is considered quite unfit for long 

 journeys over uninhabited tracts, if several hunting or fishing 

 stations are not to be met with in the course of the journey. In 

 such cases reindeer are always employed. 



" Early next day we sailed, or more correctly, rowed on, the 

 weather being calm and beautiful. We rested at midday in the 

 neighbourhood of a now deserted sintcvie on the southern part 

 of Sopotschnoi Island. Hence we continued our journey first to 

 Cape Maksuninskoj, where we visited a Samoyede family that 

 had set up their skin tent here in order to collect the necessary 

 stock of fish for winter ; afterHards to Tolstoj Nos, a still in- 

 habited, well-built simovie^ where the people living there re- 

 ceived us in a very friendly way, and received the account of our 

 journey with great interest and astonishment." 



From here the party made haste to catch the last steamer at 

 Saostrowoskoj, in the neighbourhood ol Dudinka, which they did 

 on Aug. 31. 



" We were yet far north of the Arctic circle, and as many 

 imagine that the region we had now passed through, the so 

 iittle-Jwnown tundra of Siberia, is a desert waste, either covered 

 by ice and snow or by an exceedingly scanty moss vegetation, it 

 is perhaps the place here to declare that this by no means is the 

 case. On the contrary, we saw, duiing our passage up the 

 Jenisei, snow only at one place, a deep valley cleft of some 

 fathoms' extent, and the vegetation, especially on the islands 

 which are overflowed during the spring floods, was remarkable 

 for a luxutiance to which I had seldcm before seen anything 

 corresponding. 



"The fertility of the soil and the immeasurable extent of the 

 meadow land and the richness of the grass upon it had already 



lied forth from one of our hunters, a middle-aged man, who is 



vner of a little pitch of ground between the fells in Northern 

 Norway, a cry of envy of the splendid land our Lord had given 

 'the Russian,' and of astonishment that no creature pastured, no 

 scythe mowed the grass. Daily and hourly we heard the same 

 cry repeated, though in yet louder tones, when we some weeks 

 after came to the lofty old forests between Jeniseisk and Turu- 

 chansk, or to the nearly tmintiabited plains on the other side of 

 Krasnojarsk, covered with deep tschornosim (black earth) — in 

 fertility certainly comparable to the best parts of Scania, in 

 extent exceeding the whole of the Scandinavian peninsula. This 

 irect expression of opinion by a veritable if unlearned agricul- 



rist may perhaps not be without its interest in judging of the 

 .uture of Siberia. 



"During this very summer three separate Russian expeditions 

 have travelled through Siberia with the view of ascertaining the 

 possibility of improving the river commimication within the 

 I conntry. These expeditions have, according to unofficial com- 

 munications made to me in Jeniseisk, come to the conclusion 

 that it is possible for a sum of 7oo,cxx> roubles to make the 

 Angara (a tributary of the Jenisei) navigable to Lake Baikal, 

 and to connect the Obi with the Jenisei and the Jenisei with the 

 Lena. How great an extent of territory the proposed river 

 communication will embrace is best seen by considering that the 

 territory drained by the Obi-Irtisch and the Jenisei adone is of 

 greater extent, according to Von Baer's calculation, than the 

 ! river areas of all the rivers (the Danube, Don, Dnieper, Dniester, 

 Nile, Po, Ebro, Rhone, &c.), which fall into the Black Sea, the 

 "ca of Marmora, and the Mediterranean. Part of this territory 



deed lies north of the Arctic circle, but here too are 

 lound the most extensive andj finest forests of the globe ; 

 louth of the forest region proper there stretch out terri- 



tories, several hundred leagues in extent, level, free of stones, 

 covered with the most fertile soil, which only wait for the plough 

 of the cultivator to yield the most abundant harvests ; and farther 

 to the south the Jenisei and its tributaries run through regions 

 where the grape ripens on the bare ground : just now, as I write 

 this, I have before me a bunch of the finest Siberian grapes. 

 May the future show that sea communication between these lands 

 and Europe has now been fairly inaugurated. 



"A. E, NORDENSKJOLD." 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 



Der Naiurforscher, October 1875. — In this number is given 

 an observation by M. Coulier, that while a cloud was formed in 

 a vessel containing a little water, when an attached caoutchouc 

 balloon was first compressed, then allowed to expand, no cloud 

 was thus produced if the vessel had stood some time at rest, or 

 if the air had been filtered ; and the author's view was confirmed 

 that small particles in the air were what caused the formation. M. 

 Mascart has found that strongly ozonised air is not robbed of its 

 cloud-forming action by filtering. — There are two valuable papers 

 in meteorology, one by M. Hann, on the variability of daily 

 temperature, and another in which M. Kemer offers an explana- 

 tion of the fact that there is, in the Swiss valleys, in late autumn 

 and winter, a middle warm region limited both below and above 

 by a colder. — In physiology we note some interesting researches 

 by M. Bernstein as to what is the highest pitch of tone a muscle 

 may be made to give by electric stimulation. Above 418 vibra- 

 tions per second of the spring contact, the muscle tone (the same 

 as that of the spring) was distinct, though weaker ; at 1,056 vibra- 

 tions no distinct tone was observed, only a noise. But if the nerve 

 were stimulated to the latter degree the muscle gave a tone, not 

 indeed the same as the spring, but a fifth, sometimes an octave, 

 lower. The upper limit bejond which the muscle ceased to give 

 the same tone «vdth the spring (in this arrangement) seemed to 

 be about 933 vibrations. Under chemical stimulus of a nerve, 

 the connected muscle gave a tone like that in natural contraction. 

 — There is also a suggestive paper by M. Delboeuf on the theory 

 of sensation, and M. Hirschbeig describes observations on a boy 

 who acquired sight at seven years of age ; they favour, he con- 

 siders, the empiristic theory of sight-perceptions. — In a paper 

 on the origin of the deep-water faima of the Lake of Geneva, 

 M. Forel thinks the entire fauna of the Swiss lakes are descended 

 from forms which have migrated (up the rivers) since the melting 

 of the glaciers, and have afterwards! been differentiated. 



Zeitschrift der Oesterreichischen Gesdhchaft Jiir Metcorologie, 

 Oct. I. — Dr. Wild, Director of St. Petersburg Observatory, 

 relates the circumstances which led to the Imperial assent being 

 given in Jvme last to the scheme for the establishment at Paw- 

 lowsk, distant about an hour by railway from St. Petersburg, of 

 an observatory to be affiliated to the central institution for ter- 

 restrial physics over which he presides. The Central Observa- 

 tory was built twenty-six years ago in an open and quiet space 

 outside the capital. Houses and streets have, however, rapidly 

 been constructed around it, masses of iron are in proximity, and 

 noise and smoke disturb physical measurements, magnetic and 

 meteorological observations. Herr Wild knew that there were 

 serious objections to the removal of the whole establishment into 

 the country, as has been done at Vienna, and determined to recom- 

 mend a separation into two divisions, one observing and the 

 other administrative, in imitation of the London Meteorological 

 Office and Kew Observatory, the relations to the public of the 

 Russian being similar to those of the English Meteorological 

 Department. On his making this proposal at the Academy of 

 Sciences last autumn. Prince Nicolajewitsch generously pre- 

 sented lor the purposes of the new observatory a large piece of 

 ground in his park at Pawlowsk. There will be no reduction in 

 the estimate for the Central Observatory, in order that local 

 observations may be continued, and the accumulated records of 

 former years worked out. — Dr. Hellmann contributes a paper on 

 the physical conditions of the higher atmospheric strata, in which 

 he discusses the observations made in May 1872 by the U.S. 

 War Department at the summit (1,915 metres high), and at the 

 base of Mount Washington, New Hampshire. It appears among 

 other results that the mean difference of temperature for 100 

 metres of ascent between the hours of 6 A.M. and 6 P.M. and 

 9 P.M. and 12 P.M. at night was -69° C, and that the difference 

 between 4 and 5 P.M. was '83 and at 6 a.m. only "48° C. ; 

 that in 17 "4 cases per cent, the wind at the top was the same in 



